Winner: ECOSTORE USA $25 Giveaway

My giveaway ended at 12PM PST on Monday, July 15th..Yes that was officially yesterdays news. I've got a winner!!!! My winner is comment #8 by EVILMOMMY!!!!!

She commented the following:

EVILMOMMY said...

"I would love to try the laundry powder. I just replaced my washer and dryer with front loading ones. We recycle as much as possible, we each have several re-fillable water bottles, I try not to use plastic bags for storage and reuse them when I receive them from someone else."

EVILMOMMY....I see that your blog is private. I'm going to try and contact you, by adding you. If you see this, please contact me!!!

Magic Shoe 5K Run: A Race Report

On Saturday, June 13th, I ran the Magic Shoe 5K in Newport Beach. This is the first time that I ran the Magic Shoe. It used to be called The Bastille Day 5K, I ran that two years ago. This race started and ended at Corona del Mar High School.

I trained for this race with my favorite run club at the lululemon store in the Irvine Spectrum. We trained for four weeks. My running pal, Monique, was also supposed to run it with me. Monique slept through her alarms, and was unable to make it.

It was a pretty easy flat course. It was also a smaller race, with less than a 1,000 people. Lately, all of the races that I've done have had quite a bit of people, which adds to the fun.

Unfortunately the day prior to the race, I started getting sick. I got some kind of cold from Angry Toddler in the middle of the week. I thought I was fine, but it got worse on Friday night. Of course I paid for the race on Thursday night. I didn't want to waste the $31 that I paid. So I sucked it up and ran.

My chest hurt a little and I was tired during the run. I didn't PR, but finished decently. I go back and forth between the same 30 seconds for the past 3-4 races. It's probably because I need to lose some weight and work on some speedwork. I do so well at the beginning, and then I seem to hit the wall.

Once again, another FAIL at the finish line. I had to run through the finish line, and then walk around the corner for water. Is this a new thing? What happened to getting water at the end? Seriously, I'm tired of walking through the crowds trying to get to water.

I had to leave immediately after the race to take Angry Toddler to his sports class.

After the 5K race, they had a High Heel Dash. I would have liked to see that.

My next race is the Huntington Beach Fourth of July 5K-The 2009 Surf City Run. I have a love/hate relationship with this race. I love the patriotism and the great feeling of running in Huntington Beach. It's such a festive city. My hate is that it's not a timing chip race. It is usually very hot and muggy.

Unfortunately, I have no photos of me at this race. Hopefully, there will be some decent official race photos. But that is highly unlikely.

P.S. I did something new this race too. I ran without music. Yep, no iPod. It really wasn't that bad at all.

June Gloom

We've had serious June Gloom here in Southern California. It started out in late May and has continued. It slightly rained here several times last week.

I keep seeing everyone post about warm weather, going to the pool, and eating popsicles. I actually wore a jacket into work today.

I'm also gloomy because I'm working swing shift right now, 4pm-2am. I haven't working this shift during the summer since 2006.

While everyone else is having fun, BBQing, and spending time with their families on the weekend, I'm at work. I have Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays off. On Tuesdays, Angry Toddler has The Little Gym, and on Thursdays, I had run club. My run club is out of service for the next few months. I should get a little break until early fall.

I bought Angry Toddler a baseball and a mit last week from Target. We've been taking a sports class through the city for the past month. He still doesn't quite get the throw and catch thing, but we are working on it.

I also got Angry Toddler a new big-boy bicycle. I bought it used from Marisa, whom I met through Twitter actually. Angry Husband's best friend, Eric, was trying to teach Angry Toddler how to ride a 2-wheeler last week. Angry Toddler is doing pretty good. He knows how to use the brakes now. We aren't quite ready to take off the training wheels though.

I went to a Tweet-Up last week at a local restaurant. We talked about our websites, blogs, and Twitter. I met some cool new people. I also learned about TweetChat, as I was complaining about TweetDeck. I go to these meet-ups because I do genuinely like people. Some people in my "normal" life do not get the whole blogging, Twitter thing. Even my own mother is confused by it, but really she can't even check her own e-mail.

Yesterday, Angry Toddler and I started getting a cold. I think it's something to do with the weather and possibly that Angry Husband has had the dogs inside the house all week. My allergies are driving me crazy. Angry Toddler was up all night coughing last night.

Today, I got up extra early and ran the Magic Shoe 5K run. I trained for this run with my favorite people from lululemon's run club. I will have that race report, tomorrow, or the next day.

Maybe, we can get some sunshine here in So. Cal tomorrow. Angry Husband has some things to do all day, so it's just Angry Toddler and me.

Show Us Where You Live Friday-Bathrooms

I've been participating on this blog carnival for the past few weeks, showing off my house. This carnival is sponsored by Kelly from Kelly's Korner.

This week's feature is bathrooms. The bathrooms are two of the worst and least decorated rooms in our house. We need to get the flooring done in them, so we are totally behind the decorating. I also want to let everyone know that it is EXTREMELY hard to photograph bathrooms, and even worse, small bathrooms. I've learned this in my professional experiences at work, trust me.

So let's get this tour started with the Master Bathroom:

This is the view from the master bedroom. See how tiny our sink and dressing area is. Yep, one sink. The cabinets are our linen closet. We also have our cable receiver and blu-ray player inside the cabinet.

Our sink and counter area. The medicine cabinet is from Pottery Barn. I got it on clearance. I hate in the wall metal medicine cabinets. This is one of the first things we did to the master bathroom was remove the metal in-wall medicine cabinet. The cabinet is original but we added the granite counter, the sink, and the new faucets.

Our tiny shower and toilet area. Blah, blah...no paint on these walls, just white primer.

This is the Guest Bathroom, or better known as Angry Toddler's Bathroom:

The shower curtain is from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. The granite counter was new to the bathroom after we moved in. The cabinets are original to the house. We even re-did the window above the shower. The floors are awful, vinyl.

Close-up of the sink area.

Medicine cabinet is from Lowe's. Umm, yea the light. Isn't that wonderful. Angry Husband was trying to change the light bulb and broke the fixture. We haven't found a replacement yet. But really, we haven't looked for the replacement.

Our house is 1100 square foot. Tiny house = tiny bathrooms. Thanks for checking out our two bathrooms, which need a total makeover. I'm at a loss for ideas.

Oh, and I'm hosting a giveaway for a $25 Gift Certificate to Ecostore for "Green" Cleaning Products. Check out this post for more details. The contest ends on Monday, June 15th at 12pm PST.

A New Sonic for Orange County

Tonight, we dared ourselves to check out the new Sonic Drive-In in Mission Viejo. This is the second Sonic in Orange County, and the closest one to our house. The new Sonic opened last week and I've read and heard how crowded it was. They actually had a staging area for cars in a local Target parking lot.

I first fell in love with Sonic while visiting a friend in Dallas, Texas. I was a Sonic virgin then. In Texas, they are all around like McDonald's here in California. I loved it so much that I made her take me there every day I was visiting.

When I visit a new town or state, I always look to see if they have a Sonic. When I go to Las Vegas, Sonic is one of the first places that I visit. Yes, there's a Sonic in Anaheim too, off of the 91 Freeway, but it's totally inconvenient and the 91 Freeway is not my friend.

Angry Husband knows that I've been wanting to go to this new Sonic, really really bad. He granted my wish tonight. We picked up Angry Toddler from preschool and headed on our way. We went on the southbound 405 Freeway, which was a mess. We wented up exited on Lake Forest. We took Lake Forest to Jeronimo. The Sonic is on Jeronimo and Los Alisos.


We immediately noticed that it was not that crowded, which was nice. This Sonic actually has a drive-thru as opposed to just car hop areas. The drive-thru was very stream lined. The cars were not piling up at all. We choose to part a car in the shopping center parking lot and walked in. We were met with an employee with a hand held electronic order board. He took our order and we went and found a table. Within, ten minutes our order was brought to us by a car hop on roller skates. All of the car hops were wearing roller skates. There were also employees skating around the business, perhaps for practice. I even saw one female car hop lose it and fell pretty hard, luckily she was not carrying an food.


We all enjoyed our food. Angry Husband got his chili cheese tater tots and I got my beloved 44 oz. Cherry Limeade. Angry Toddler got a kid's meal with popcorn chicken and tater tots. We enjoyed our food and went on our way. Angry Toddler wanted to sample my drink on the way home, and he instantly fell in love. He did not want to give my 44 oz. goodness back.

I can't wait for the next time I get to go back there.

And if you are wondering...

The Newest Sonic in Orange County is located at: 25502 Jeronimo Road, Mission Viejo.